1. I'm told we visited a vodka bar freezer room with our friend Dennis, but between the poor visibility and the two-shot minimum, I cannot verify that story. At any rate, I don't seem to have contracted Aleutian Disease from the Instagram prop communal coat, so that's good.

2. My friend Z stayed with us for a few days. We cooked chili, watched the World Series, and hot boxed Chaucer with some disappointing marijuana in the bathroom (though not all at the same time):

3. Terence and I saw Kasabian at The Wiltern, and they rocked, and we have the sweaty selfies to prove it:

4. My friend Alfie had a birthday, and hosted a lovely dinner attended by some outgoing, interesting people who all gelled really well. I got to know his nearest and dearest a little better, and it was generally an awesome night:

6. Terence did a bunch of shows and a poetry reading, none of which I have pictures of. But here's him drinking and playing guitar instead, because he's equally adorable at those activities:

7. We went to The Standard with some friends and wow, that sweater really comes out rather OMG GREY POUPON!!1! in photos, doesn't it??

8. I gave Chaucer a rope toy that he unraveled within fifteen minutes and turned into some kind of creepy hangman / voodoo doll just in time for Halloween, because he's genius like that:

9. We saw Madeon, a twenty year-old French DJ who performed one of the best EDM sets I have ever heard, and that, mes amis, is saying a lot. Kid was a pint-sized ball of energy up there, all smiles and bouncing and having the time of his life (left pic; right is Kasabian):

11. Horse Thief BBQ happened. And whatever is happening on the right happened as well:

12. I misread a party invitation and arrived at my friend Kenne's house two and a half hours early. After helping the guys set up, I retreated to the backyard with Magda the Frenchie and sipped Sangria until the more literate guests arrived. Sorry to say Mags was unimpressed by my Duolingo progress:

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I don't have any good excuse for the negligence this month, and I didn't set out to take a deliberate hiatus, but I will say this: it's much easier to focus on what my life feels like when I spend less time worrying about what it looks like.

Should my shameless, NSFW Twitter plea lead you here, please know that I am a massive fan who is more than willing to purchase tickets for your Halloween show, but the club at which you're performing is being a little cheeky about sales. Meanwhile, resellers on StubHub are asking about a bajillion dollars, and as you can see, I can't even afford pants. Take pity on a girl?

If you're feeling generous, I can be reached at elliequent@me.com

Love,
Ellie

p.s. You should know I'm opening myself up to some serious fucking snark for this, but you are worth it.

That thing people do, where they are grossly ostentatious in showing wealth, with the express purpose of making others jealous? It has a name: invidious consumption.

Invidious consumption is defined as "the deliberate conspicuous consumption of goods and services intended to provoke the envy of other people, as a means of displaying the buyer's superior socio-economic status."

We all know this phenomenon exists. Thanks to the internet, we see it all the time. But if like me, you didn't realize there was a handy sociological term to denote it, well, now you know. And if like me, you find it exhausting to witness, think about how exhausting it is to be those people. To be constantly burdened by the need to prove something to others - to people they probably don't even like. People they've ex'ed out of their lives. Ex-husbands and ex-lovers and ex-friends.

I can't even imagine.

Oh wait, yeah I can. I can imagine, because there have been times in my life that I've done it myself - times when my financial security seemed like the only thing I had going for me. And yeah, it was exhausting. It is fucking exhausting to make choices based on deeply rooted hurt and anger. Oh yeah? You don't want me in your life anymore? Great. I'm gonna show you just how fucking amazing my life is without you in it.God, I am so much fucking happier now. Can you not see how FUCKING HAPPY I AM??

It's impossible to get through offline life without collecting cuts and hurts along the way. Painfully dissolved romances, abandoned friendships, misunderstandings and miscommunications. But bloggers and other live-online'ers (i.e., heavy users of social media) amass these cuts and hurts in full view of everyone they know (and a good deal they don't, the imagined judgment of whom is sometimes worse). Pride and ego - which despise pity - demand they show everyone that, not only have they survived, but they've gotten to the very top of the caterpillar pillar, bitches.

A public platform (such as the internet) + an inability to let go + insecurity = the perfect storm for invidious consumption.

Part of why I quit Instagram is that I recognize remnants of this behavior in myself, even though I have worked really hard, in the years since my divorce, to curb it. Not so much invidious consumption as "invidious happiness". One could argue that happiness is a form of emotional wealth, so in a way, it's the same net effect. I've got something you don't, person I dislike for X reason. Neener neener.

This is not to say my happiness hasn't been real, because I can say with gratitude that it is, even when it is undercut by my ever-present depression. But if it's easy to throw up a smiling snapshot on my blog sans context, sans any attempt at thoughtfully rounding out the bigger picture of my life (ups AND downs), on Instagram the whole fucking point is to blast the best moments and cut the sound on the worst.

The internet is a great place for sharing our lives with people we like. But it's also the perfect vehicle for showcasing those lives, like diamonds in Tiffany's window, to those we don't. And when we cease to examine our motives online, we cease to care about the difference. And that's not an internet anyone needs.